EXXON Has Solution to Arkansas Oil Now in Wetlands: PAPER TOWELS

[Segami]

PAPER TOWELS??....PAPER TOWELS?? ......An environmental disaster without a plan.

From the group Tar Sands Blockade, new photos and video from the Arkansas spill showing a scene so bad it's surreal: Oil is now in nearby Lake Conway's wetlands, either intentionally diverted by Exxon to keep it out of sight and away from the (few members of the) media (who have managed to sneak into the area), or naturally drained there from the company's power washing of streets and sidewalks. There is nothing quite like the sight of their solution: a ragged mess of paper towels, specially designed to soak up oil but not water, laid hopefully on the putrid ground.







http://www.commondreams.org/further/2013/04/07-0

[limpyhobbler]

1. you really can't make this stuff up

[Segami]

5. The people in Arkansas better wish for Single Payer Health Care for the years to come.

[Initech]

2. Put a few Shamwows on there, that should do the trick!

[edbermac]

14. No way! Every knows that Bounty is the quicker-picker-upper!

[Initech]

17. I know! Why don't we just put toilet water on it! /Idiocracy solution

[SidDithers]

3. They're not paper towels...

and anyone reporting them as paper towels shouldn't have anything to do with an oil spill.

They're meltblown polypropylene sheets. Very fine fibres of meltblown polypropylene are layered into sheets 1/8", 1/4" or 3/8" thick.

Because of the close weave, the polypropylene sheets adsorb oil, but repel water. When you put them on a pond, they adsorb the oil from the surface of the water, without soaking up any water. Each 18" x 18" sheet will adsorb between .5 litre and a litre of motor oil. They don't work as well with heavy crude.

You can buy them at almost any industrial supply.

http://www.newpig.com/pig/US/absorbents-503/pig-oil-absorbent-mats-747?cm_cat=lp_topland_mats

More quality journalism from commondreams.

Sid

[limpyhobbler]

10. How do you know it's not paper towels ? You called Exxon to ask what kind of pads they use ?

[SidDithers]

12. Because paper towels behave completely differently when you put them in water...

What happens when you put a paper towel in water? It gets saturated with water and oil.

Polypro sheets don't act that way. They'll stay pristine in water, and will only saturate when in oil.

The video shows clean, white sheets floating in water. That's not a paper towel.

The spill is bad enough without having to lie about the clean-up efforts.

ETA:

Excuse all the NewPig links, they're the biggest in the US, so it's easy to find their stuff.

Sid

[PennsylvaniaMatt]

11. Thanks for the info Sid...

Because Rachel literally just had this on her show and reported it as paper towels. Even brought a roll of Brawny onto the set!

[SidDithers]

13. I knew as soon as I saw the video yesterday...

and the idiot said "paper towels" that the credulous media would pick that up and run with it, without doing any checking.

Even Rachel isn't immune to mistakes, it seems.

Sid

[Comrade_McKenzie]

21. LOL! Commondreams, color me shocked. nt

[MADem]

22. I agree that this is some of the shittiest, stupidest reporting I have ever seen.

I have a little experience in the oil spill game, and I knew that no one in their right mind would be using paper towels--for an outfit claiming to be "reporting" on this story, they really should be ashamed of themselves. A quick call to any environmental clean-up agency, like Waste Management, or even the EPA, would have given them the answer to their question.

I suppose I'll have to say that just because I think this is moronic reporting, that doesn't mean that I "endorse" Exxon Mobile--or any other oil company's--spills. If I don't say that, specifically, I'm sure someone will accuse me of being a shill for Big Oil.

[DollarBillHines]

4. What do you want to bet that they are Bounty brand?

Those Koch dudes are everywhere.

[Cleita]

6. Now we'll go out and destroy forests to make enough paper towels.

[jmowreader]

7. They're called absorbent mats

As strange and stupid as it looks, absorbent mats are one of the best technologies out there for soaking up oil spills.

[Robb]

16. I've seen them around marine fuel docks.

I would think they'd have them in larger sizes at least?

[jmowreader]

24. They're bigger than they look in that picture

They're 18" x 20". There is a mat that comes on a 150-foot roll, but that's the "absorbs everything" rather than the "oil only" mat.

The 18" x 20" is a handy size; you can just grab a handful of them and throw them down wherever you need to.

[JaneyVee]

8. Exxon, using dead trees to clean up dead dinosaurs.

[TheMadMonk]

18. Millions of year dead trees, according to a posts above.

Posts which predate yours (and several others), but of course one should never let inconvenient facts get in the way of properly righteous outrage.

What happened was hidieously wrong, and clearly something needs to be done about Exxon et. al. cutting corners in the day to day running of their businesses, but I doubt very much Exxon is cutting too many corners in the cleanup here, not when it has the potential to come back and bite them on the arse every time another "Cheeky", "Fluffy" or "Fido" needs to be inhumed.

[Auntie Bush]

9. Didn't Kevin Costner invent some machine or method

that gets rid of oil in a spill after the gulf spill? Anyone remember?

[TheMadMonk]

19. You can't type "kevin costner gulf" into google? /nt

[Yavin4]

15. Don't the Koch Brothers Own Brawny Paper Towels?

I think so.

[Comrade_McKenzie]

20. 2008: MIT develops a 'paper towel' for oil spills

A mat of nanowires with the touch and feel of paper could be an important new tool in the cleanup of oil and other organic pollutants, MIT researchers and colleagues report in the May 30 online issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

The scientists say they have created a membrane that can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil, and can be recycled many times for future use. The oil itself can also be recovered. Some 200,000 tons of oil have already been spilled at sea since the start of the decade.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oil-paper-0530.html

[freethought]

23. Not meaning to applaud Exxon but this is quite typical

We used to call those things 3-M pads. As the article says they look like a big paper towel but they are especially made for absorbing up oils and other organic liquids. I've worked on diesel and fuel oil spills and I hate to say in such situations there really are not any other good options.
If oil spills in a body of water the usual approach is to set out something called a "boom", it looks like that big white sausage in the bottom photograph. The boom is set out and moved to corral and concentrate the oil where it can be soaked up by the pad or sucked up by pump trucks.
Other options? Well, during the Valdeez spill they used pressurized steam to clean rocks and shoreline of the crude oil, however it raised absolute havoc with local ecology. The other option is to used detergents and or dispersing agents which can cause more problems than they solve. Corexit anyone?
The 3-M pads are widely used because they are cheap. Companies I worked for bought them by the truckload. Once they have absorbed their share of oil they can be easily gathered up, drummed and then sent off to be incinerated. If oil gets on the ground, the best option is often to come in with a backhoe or something an scrape an inch or two off the top of the afflicted area.
I would be interested in who is supervising the spill response. In some of the spill I worked on, nobody seemed to know who was in charge.
These photos don't surprise me a bit. It's what I expected for the most part.